Fortune
by Storymaster Caith
Summary: Fortunes are fickle as the wind. Pirates understand this. Usopp/Cpt. Kidd oneshot. Potential spoilers for current storyline.


**Fortune**

**_AUTHOR'S NOTES: Woot, first foray into One Piece.. and it's with a crack pairing, color me surprised. One shot, timeline set..dunno, sometime after the multiple Kuma-induced vacations. Yaoi ahead, so steer ye clear of the reef if you don't want to get shipwrecked on the gay. I try to be as accurate to the manga as possible since I have little time or patience for the anime, so please keep any nitpicky 'spelling of kidd's name' or whatnot comments to yourself. Any other crit is welcome. _  
**

They both knew where they stood.

_"Nghh..fuck, sniper-"_

"_Shh. You're too tense." _

The Captain's loyalty was to a dream; and he'd beat the crap out of anyone who got in his way. He had clawed his way from the south blue to shabondy archipelago and beyond, with a crew so infamous that the marines knew him by name; he'd come too far to turn back now.

The sniper's loyalty was simpler; it was to his Captain, wherever the fool might lead, one hand on his old straw hat and the other pointing onward towards the never-ending horizon.

_Caramel fingers on bluewhite shoulders, kneading, poking, smoothing lines. _

"_hahh..damnit.." _

"_You swear too much, Eustass." _

Both of them knew that this was something even less than temporary; it was transient, opaque, a shred of cloud drifting away on the harsh winds of the Grand Line. Any day, either of them could die, whether by a marine's musket ball- or each others' hands.

They were pirates, after all.

_"I don't think you ever relax at-ah!"_

"_I'm not very good with relaxing, sniper." Bright white teeth buried playfully in a smooth, arching collarbone. The window panes are rattling in the dark. _

Hell, the entire THING was a fluke- just another joke of Fate's, in that long line of horribly bad jokes she had played already on Captain Kidd. It involved an accidental crewman switch, and the loss respectively of iconic goggles and hat; there hadn't been time to correct the oversights, and fleeing from the marines had meant the two supernovas had barely been able to form a plan that was almost half baked.

Which was how the Maroon pirates wound up temporarily gaining a sniper.

_They shift easily together and black bleeds into red. The Captain asserts himself and the sniper doesn't mind, really, because that's the whole point, although he'd never tell- secrets are almost as much fun as lies._

Something about the kid just irked the Captain. At first he thought that maybe it was the nose, or the constant apologies, or the sheer cowardice. Two nights later, sitting quietly on what had been designated as 'his' barrel, the sniper for another ship's crew looked at the Captain and said, neutrally,

"You always look tired, Kidd. Why is that?"

The Captain discovered that his irritation had been misplaced.

_Breath comes heavy against the back of his neck because the sniper knows he likes the feeling, to hear the body work harder to keep up with him; Kidd is in all things a competitor._

_"Tease," he manages to work out, and those too-narrowed eyes promise retribution for the comment. He shivers with the anticipation of it._

A verbal argument had escalated to Kidd-yelling-at-top-volume-while-unimpressed-sniper-looked-on, then degenerated into a laundry list of worries that the captain blamed the next morning on three too many mugs of beer.

"You know what your problem is?" the sniper had said, voice shaking just slightly. "You're too much of a captain and not enough of a nakama."

_Tracing a living human is something akin to touching a work of art and he takes full advantage of the chance to do so as he is pressed tightly against the mattress._

"_Are you ready?" is the harsh whisper in his ear. _

_He is. _

They'd delivered him safely to the next island, two weeks' travel time from their last peaceful-docking-cum-natural-disaster-courtesy-of-an-overzealous-rubberman. They retrieved an irate Killer and his captain's goggles, leaving behind a long-nosed liar who always knew, it seemed, far more than he should.

"SUUGGOOIII~ My hat!"

"Good to know you missed me, Luffy."

The sniper thought perhaps the captain would forget.

But Eustass Kidd did not forget.

_"Eustass…nhh..harder, I won't break."_

"_Tcht, but mugiwara will have my ass if you do-"_

They met again and again, which Basil Hawkins would have loved if he'd ever known about it. (and he didn't, Kidd made DAMN sure of that, although the tiny superior smirk on the emotionless pirate's face when he looked at Kidd and then at his tarot cards always made the younger pirate antsy) Sometimes meetings went on for a while. It was to be expected. They were supernovas, the cream of the crop, the best of the best.

But they hadn't fought. Not yet. Not for real.

_When the moment comes it isn't quite in perfect harmony, but the Sniper knows this isn't about him, anyway; and when the man above him tenses he leans up, kisses his shoulder, and lets go._

They would, someday. Magnetism and rubber. Three hundred and fifteen verses three hundred. It would be a fight to remember and on that day this thing, this fragile chrysalis they shared, would break into a million tiny pieces. The Captain would command his ship, the Sniper would load his guns.

Who knows. Maybe one of them would die.

_"Mmmm."_

"_What?" _

"_Nothing." That ridiculous coat is surprisingly warm. Stretching out on it seems bittersweetly natural. _

But not yet. Not now. Not here, in this place. And transience, like lies, is something both of them are intimate with.

_"I like your eyes."_

"_Sentimentality, Captain Kidd?" _

"_It's a statement of fact, dumbass. They're nice." _

"_..thank you, I suppose." _

"_You're checking the cannon balance before I hand you over again." _

"_Tcht. You need the Great Usopp to do your dirty work again? Why the hell don't you just find a marksman yourself?"_

"_Killer keeps killing them." _

"_Oh, that makes me feel better."_

Usopp is a skilled liar, but he does not lie to himself. Someone will become Pirate King in this era. Perhaps it will be the dark eyed Kidd. He does not share this idea with anyone, because if anything Usopp is a realist and all too familiar with failure. In his heart of hearts, where Sogeking lives, Usopp doesn't believe he has anything to fear. His Captain will be Pirate King. But so might Kidd.

And if he is, well..Eustass would forgive him for attempting revenge, weak as it might be. Fortune, after all, favors the brave.

_**A/N:..yeah. So this is Caith's version of Usopp, who is a little older and a bit more mature than our current sniper, who admittedly is doing much better in the character development department. I can't tell you why I like this pairing. –coughpairsUsoppwithalmosteverysupernovacough- it just sort of happens.  
**_


End file.
